Thebe Neruda Kgositsile (born February 24, 1994), also known as Earl Sweatshirt, is a rapper, producer, DJ, and a former member of the LA based collective Odd Future. He produces under the alias RandomBlackDude.

Earl first met fame when he released his debut mixtape in 2010, Earl. Along with Tyler, the Creator’s Bastard and the group’s Radical, his debut was released freely on OF’s website, and made the collective rise to prominence, with critical acclaim by the media and a lot of discussion about the controversial nature of the group’s lyrical content.

Due to personal problems, Earl was sent by his mother to spend 2 years in Samoa, at the Coral Reef Academy. In 2012 he would return to his home in Los Angeles, where he would feature in The OF Tape Vol.2 and Frank Ocean’s album debut, channel ORANGE.

In 2013, to much acclaim, Sweatshirt released his first mature work, Doris, which featured production mostly handled by Earl, but also by The Neptunes, RZA, BADBADNOTGOOD, Frank Ocean and Tyler the Creator.

On March 23, 2015, Earl released his sophomore studio effort, I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, where he would take a more introspective and depressing direction on his content and sound. All of the tracks were produced by Earl himself, with the exception of ex OF colleague, Left Brain producing one song.

During a 3 year hiatus from music, Earl suffered from multiple personal losses: the death of his father, the poet Keorapetse Kigotsile, and of his close friend Mac Miller. On the 8th of November 2018, he finally broke his silence and released “Nowhere2go”; the first single from his forthcoming project. He followed-up this track with “The Mint,” the second single from his third album.

From time to time, he updates his SoundCloud with unreleased tracks.

On November 30th, 2018 Earl released his third official studio album, the 15-track Some Rap Songs, making it Earl’s first album since March 23, 2015.

Then, a little less than a year after Some Rap Songs, Earl surprised many of his fans with a 7-track EP entitled FEET OF CLAY, that dropped on November 1, 2019. The project featured artists like Mach-Hommy and Mavi.